I think a major point that needs to be groked by fresh game designers, both physical and digital, and dare I say even authors in other media like fiction, is that IDEAS ARE CHEAP. Ideas are close to worthless on their own. Everyone has a dozen of them stashed away, and people who consider themselves creatives likely have over a hundred. All your excitement about an idea or concept should be focused into energy to bring it into reality, and if in that process it doesn't feel like it's going to cut it, you lose nothing by abandoning an idea. Holding on to an idea for a project when it's not panning out is naive and can actually become delusional. I'm sure we all met those designers/authors that can't seem to let go of their one project (usually their first) that just won't stick. You can sit down in a lazy afternoon with your toxin of choice and come up with a dozen concepts. If it doesn't work, learn and move on.
Interesting video. The spark thing is so true. I was testing someones game and the whole table was dead and you could tell no one was having fun. It was an awful experience. That designer has pushed on with the design, spent ages on art and more and all i can think is they are throwing money down a toilet. I have the good fortune of a 100% pitch to sign ratio for my games. Submitted 2 prototypes to publishers, got both signed. I tend to know if a game is going to not work by the time i've made the first prototype. If i can't model it out effectively in my head first and make it work there, it never hits paper, so i have like 30 games that never got past the "sketch it out" stage.
That’s very interesting! For me, I like to get my ideas onto the table as soon as possible and see what happens during the playtest. It is usually quite different from what I had imagined in my mind. But good for you, that’s a great superpower to have!
I use to model strategies and mechanics in my head first. If I had to play that game for the rest of my life and I would not have fun, that means it sucks.
I have a game prototype in predevelopment. I also did a university study and acquired a provisional patent on the original idea. I have spawned 3 more games from the original. The development work is for Play store, APPLE, and PC. It is planned later to create a board version of it. Can I ask what type of game you published and who published it? appreciate any support as this is my first official go at creating a game. Thanks.
Thanks so much! Yes all of your hard work really pays off when you see people enjoying and having fun playing the game you created. Such a great feeling 😊
Pam, great video as always. I really appreciated your point on gauging playtester and especially publisher feedback. This is a major miss many designers tend to ignore. You said it best, that designers really should take into consideration the reasons for the feedback they got and evaluate how that will direct their game from there. There is so much to grok from those within the niche of our industry we are trying to pitch and it's really easy to take our game's feedback personal instead. Side note: I would love to see the other video we voted on, if and when you get a chance to discuss it in the future! Thanks again! Justin
Dang, I feel really guilty for hanging on to my first couple of ideas for board games (even though one would clearly be way too expensive to manufacture & doesn't fit on tables properly & the other one has lacked spark in playtests), but at the same time, I'm pretty thorough about researching to make sure the game doesn't already exist. Coming up with game ideas that don't already exist is tough.
Yes it is tough, I playtested a new game last night and was quickly told about another game that does almost the exact same thing 🤦♀️ Oh well, just have to keep generating new ideas!
How do you even know if a board game already exists? I mean, I've had a lot of board game ideas. A lot already existed, but there are some good ones that I haven't heard existed yet. Where do I look to know if it already existed or not.
Was so excited about this idea I had been mulling about for weeks about players rolling two dice and getting points based on the results they rolled... made a quick prototype and tested it out with my friends. Boy was it a painful experience. I couldn't think of a single part of it I wanted to iterate on, so the project died right there. At least it let me focus on different ideas instead of continuing to build it up in my head. It's incredibly hard to know if something will be fun before you actually sit down and play it.
Yes that’s so true! It can be the best game ever invented in your head, and then terrible when you actually play it. Good for you for getting it to the table though, now you can move on to the next idea 🙌
When I saw this tirle of video I thought you were going to talk about mechanics. While designing a game for me to have fun, I found thing that made the game to suck. * Excess of book keeping. * Deterministic victory * Wrong level of player control. * One strategy to win I wanted a big spaceship (think of Battlestar Galactica or USS Enterprise) to have 100 people. I wanted to allocate them so they do their job in a fun way. There were 2 choices. Trucking or Combat. There are already trucking games so I went for combat. "The Captain is dead" already allocates personnel but they try to escape combat, not fight back My idea us that I could monitor hungry, sleep and skill level. It meant a 100 worker dashboard with 100 trackers to update per turn. Boring book keeping mechanic. In the end I ended up with 32 workers. Why? Because I had 32 chess pieces at home. Sucked badly. It could work for a videogame, and AI would automate trackers, but not tabletop. Ok. So these workers would make the ship work. What would be the mechanics of combat? There were only 2 turrets and one fighter. It means 3 attacks per turn. The outcome would be very deterministic. The one who starts firing first, wins. That sucked badly. Rolling dice to see if attack succeeds, like in Rebellion base game, sucked badly. It was just not the proper mechanic because dice automated combat. So workers need to be allocated to do their combat job only to get a random outcome? There was the wrong level of player control. And that sucked badly. So I had to rethink the whole ship to ship combat minigame and along the way. And I did. But there was a problem. One strategy to win. I came across the game Star Wars Risk where you handle shield generator, space battle and Vader vs Luke. But the winning strategy is to focus on shield generator and blow the Death Star. The rest can be ignored. In Starship Captains, focus on missions and disregard any other ways of scoring and you will win. Terrible cases of one strategy to win. I was horrified when I discovered my game had one strategy to win. So the simple minigame had to become more complex. And it did. Probably I will keep finding areas in which it sucks. But I am doing it just for fun. And every time I find it ducks it is hilarious at how badly it sucks. It is like seeing collapsing Jenga towers. It fsils but the way it fails is awesome because you expected to fail but not in such cringy hillarious spectacular fail. I had a blast making my game and spotting things that suck. A game should be designed to spot areas in which a game sucks. It is so much fun.
I could definitely make a video about how to tell your board game sucks mechanics-wise, it would likely include: 1. Too much uncertainty/luck 2. No replayability 3. Too finicky (like the bookkeeping you mentioned) 4. Not enough interesting choices for the players Etc…
Like your channel! I was wondering if as a game designer you are still able to play as a non designer? Or are you always analyzing all the games you play. And if you can, which game or kind of game allows you to do so. Thanks!
@@PamWallsGameDesign Playing games with a table full of designers is also just hilarious. They can't help themselves at the end of the game going through what could be tweaked, what they loved and wished they had thought of first, what they would adapt into a game, what decision points were ace. I've played a game with 4 folks each with a game in the BGG top 400 or so, and it was a time watching them dissect the game afterwards.
I am making my own game for fun. It will suck if I fail to have fun with my own game. No need of publisher. It is made for me and for the other player I share time with. If I fail that player, I will know it sucks. But there us always a concept and imolementation. If concept does not suck, implementation is a trial and error. Without the pressure if making a top 10 game under contract, I can fsil as many times as I can, and that will be fun.
As long your players are having fun too, then it’s all good! At the end of the day, we want to create fun, memorable experiences for players, whether we want to get published or not. Best of luck with your designs 🙌
Hi Pam! Thanks for the video. As someone that's designing their first game I was wondering if you had any advice (before play testing) on how to figure out if your mechanics or ideas are actually fun or more of a chore (Streamlining vs making decisions more interesting). It's hard for me to figure out where my game could use less or more detail. An example: Catan vs Tokaido. I'd say both those games have a fairly streamlined turn mechanism. However, Tokaido feels almost too streamlined, that my decisions aren't really that interesting, whereas Catan I feel more engaged, even though I would consider it almost as simple as Tokaido (roll dice, get resource vs choose space get resource). Maybe this is more of an opinion on those games, but I'm looking for any helpful tips.
Hi Karsten! I would say issues with balancing and streamlining are things you can deal with further down the line. If this is your first game, get a basic prototype together as quickly (and cheaply) as possible and get some friends together to try it out and see how it goes. You will likely change the game quite a bit (and streamline as you go). Most people can’t figure this all out in their heads, you need to get it to the table and see how it goes!
The easiest way to check if your game will be fun later on is to look at what your players will do later during the game and for how long. For example, if you have a lot of downtime in the game, players will spend a lot of time waiting for their turn. Ultimately, if you have an idea, it's good to get it on the table as quickly as possible and test it with friends. I`ld also recommend as it's your first game, don't spend too much time and effort on it. There are developers who invested years into their first game which ended in the trash can.
@@PamWallsGameDesign I sure did! Looks like chat is wiped when the live ends. Wanna hear a funny story? I was a little bit demoralised because I am still working on my first game (I since have started working on more, thank God, but no contracts yet) and have had little luck with it, so... This video made me question seriously if I should move on to my other designs. Would you believe that 1 hour later, just now, a friend of mine asked me if we can try that game again? I'm so excited! Anyway, thank you for sharing your sensible game design tips 😁
@@michelebaioni5716 I’m glad to hear it! Best of luck playtesting it again. I like to have a few games on the go at a time so there’s less pressure on each of the games. Keep at it, you’ve got this! 🙌
I think a major point that needs to be groked by fresh game designers, both physical and digital, and dare I say even authors in other media like fiction, is that IDEAS ARE CHEAP.
Ideas are close to worthless on their own. Everyone has a dozen of them stashed away, and people who consider themselves creatives likely have over a hundred. All your excitement about an idea or concept should be focused into energy to bring it into reality, and if in that process it doesn't feel like it's going to cut it, you lose nothing by abandoning an idea. Holding on to an idea for a project when it's not panning out is naive and can actually become delusional. I'm sure we all met those designers/authors that can't seem to let go of their one project (usually their first) that just won't stick.
You can sit down in a lazy afternoon with your toxin of choice and come up with a dozen concepts. If it doesn't work, learn and move on.
I couldn’t have said it better myself 😆 💯 🔥
Interesting video. The spark thing is so true. I was testing someones game and the whole table was dead and you could tell no one was having fun. It was an awful experience. That designer has pushed on with the design, spent ages on art and more and all i can think is they are throwing money down a toilet.
I have the good fortune of a 100% pitch to sign ratio for my games. Submitted 2 prototypes to publishers, got both signed. I tend to know if a game is going to not work by the time i've made the first prototype. If i can't model it out effectively in my head first and make it work there, it never hits paper, so i have like 30 games that never got past the "sketch it out" stage.
That’s very interesting! For me, I like to get my ideas onto the table as soon as possible and see what happens during the playtest. It is usually quite different from what I had imagined in my mind. But good for you, that’s a great superpower to have!
I use to model strategies and mechanics in my head first. If I had to play that game for the rest of my life and I would not have fun, that means it sucks.
I have a game prototype in predevelopment. I also did a university study and acquired a provisional patent on the original idea. I have spawned 3 more games from the original. The development work is for Play store, APPLE, and PC. It is planned later to create a board version of it. Can I ask what type of game you published and who published it? appreciate any support as this is my first official go at creating a game. Thanks.
Hi Pam! Keep up the awesome work. I noticed when people are having fun and engaged it’s the best feeling in the world.
Thanks so much! Yes all of your hard work really pays off when you see people enjoying and having fun playing the game you created. Such a great feeling 😊
Pam, great video as always. I really appreciated your point on gauging playtester and especially publisher feedback. This is a major miss many designers tend to ignore. You said it best, that designers really should take into consideration the reasons for the feedback they got and evaluate how that will direct their game from there. There is so much to grok from those within the niche of our industry we are trying to pitch and it's really easy to take our game's feedback personal instead.
Side note: I would love to see the other video we voted on, if and when you get a chance to discuss it in the future!
Thanks again!
Justin
Thanks Justin! And yes I will make that other video soon too :)
Please make your videos louder, I can barely hear anything and I have headphones on 48%, when I normally listen on 14%.
Dang, I feel really guilty for hanging on to my first couple of ideas for board games (even though one would clearly be way too expensive to manufacture & doesn't fit on tables properly & the other one has lacked spark in playtests), but at the same time, I'm pretty thorough about researching to make sure the game doesn't already exist. Coming up with game ideas that don't already exist is tough.
Yes it is tough, I playtested a new game last night and was quickly told about another game that does almost the exact same thing 🤦♀️ Oh well, just have to keep generating new ideas!
How do you even know if a board game already exists?
I mean, I've had a lot of board game ideas. A lot already existed, but there are some good ones that I haven't heard existed yet. Where do I look to know if it already existed or not.
Was so excited about this idea I had been mulling about for weeks about players rolling two dice and getting points based on the results they rolled... made a quick prototype and tested it out with my friends. Boy was it a painful experience. I couldn't think of a single part of it I wanted to iterate on, so the project died right there. At least it let me focus on different ideas instead of continuing to build it up in my head. It's incredibly hard to know if something will be fun before you actually sit down and play it.
Yes that’s so true! It can be the best game ever invented in your head, and then terrible when you actually play it. Good for you for getting it to the table though, now you can move on to the next idea 🙌
Almost sounds like majokoro. Which is a great game. So there are ways to make that idea work
How about roll two dice, and then if the sum is even or odd, select a card from two piles, even and odd? Make it a party game and call it *Evenly Odd*
Thanks for the video Pam! Enjoyed it a lot :)
Thanks Joakim! I’m glad you enjoyed it 🙌
When I saw this tirle of video I thought you were going to talk about mechanics.
While designing a game for me to have fun, I found thing that made the game to suck.
* Excess of book keeping.
* Deterministic victory
* Wrong level of player control.
* One strategy to win
I wanted a big spaceship (think of Battlestar Galactica or USS Enterprise) to have 100 people. I wanted to allocate them so they do their job in a fun way. There were 2 choices. Trucking or Combat. There are already trucking games so I went for combat. "The Captain is dead" already allocates personnel but they try to escape combat, not fight back
My idea us that I could monitor hungry, sleep and skill level. It meant a 100 worker dashboard with 100 trackers to update per turn. Boring book keeping mechanic. In the end I ended up with 32 workers. Why? Because I had 32 chess pieces at home. Sucked badly. It could work for a videogame, and AI would automate trackers, but not tabletop.
Ok. So these workers would make the ship work. What would be the mechanics of combat? There were only 2 turrets and one fighter. It means 3 attacks per turn. The outcome would be very deterministic. The one who starts firing first, wins. That sucked badly.
Rolling dice to see if attack succeeds, like in Rebellion base game, sucked badly. It was just not the proper mechanic because dice automated combat. So workers need to be allocated to do their combat job only to get a random outcome? There was the wrong level of player control. And that sucked badly.
So I had to rethink the whole ship to ship combat minigame and along the way. And I did. But there was a problem. One strategy to win.
I came across the game Star Wars Risk where you handle shield generator, space battle and Vader vs Luke. But the winning strategy is to focus on shield generator and blow the Death Star. The rest can be ignored. In Starship Captains, focus on missions and disregard any other ways of scoring and you will win. Terrible cases of one strategy to win. I was horrified when I discovered my game had one strategy to win.
So the simple minigame had to become more complex. And it did. Probably I will keep finding areas in which it sucks. But I am doing it just for fun. And every time I find it ducks it is hilarious at how badly it sucks. It is like seeing collapsing Jenga towers. It fsils but the way it fails is awesome because you expected to fail but not in such cringy hillarious spectacular fail.
I had a blast making my game and spotting things that suck. A game should be designed to spot areas in which a game sucks. It is so much fun.
I could definitely make a video about how to tell your board game sucks mechanics-wise, it would likely include:
1. Too much uncertainty/luck
2. No replayability
3. Too finicky (like the bookkeeping you mentioned)
4. Not enough interesting choices for the players
Etc…
Like your channel! I was wondering if as a game designer you are still able to play as a non designer? Or are you always analyzing all the games you play. And if you can, which game or kind of game allows you to do so. Thanks!
Thank you! And I definitely play games through the lens of a designer, but it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the game :)
@@PamWallsGameDesign Playing games with a table full of designers is also just hilarious. They can't help themselves at the end of the game going through what could be tweaked, what they loved and wished they had thought of first, what they would adapt into a game, what decision points were ace. I've played a game with 4 folks each with a game in the BGG top 400 or so, and it was a time watching them dissect the game afterwards.
Great content! New sub here, I hope your channel grows even more
Thanks so much! (Sorry for the late reply, RUclips can be so glitchy with notifying me about comments)
I am making my own game for fun. It will suck if I fail to have fun with my own game. No need of publisher. It is made for me and for the other player I share time with. If I fail that player, I will know it sucks.
But there us always a concept and imolementation. If concept does not suck, implementation is a trial and error. Without the pressure if making a top 10 game under contract, I can fsil as many times as I can, and that will be fun.
As long your players are having fun too, then it’s all good! At the end of the day, we want to create fun, memorable experiences for players, whether we want to get published or not. Best of luck with your designs 🙌
Hi Pam! Thanks for the video.
As someone that's designing their first game I was wondering if you had any advice (before play testing) on how to figure out if your mechanics or ideas are actually fun or more of a chore (Streamlining vs making decisions more interesting). It's hard for me to figure out where my game could use less or more detail.
An example: Catan vs Tokaido. I'd say both those games have a fairly streamlined turn mechanism. However, Tokaido feels almost too streamlined, that my decisions aren't really that interesting, whereas Catan I feel more engaged, even though I would consider it almost as simple as Tokaido (roll dice, get resource vs choose space get resource). Maybe this is more of an opinion on those games, but I'm looking for any helpful tips.
Hi Karsten! I would say issues with balancing and streamlining are things you can deal with further down the line. If this is your first game, get a basic prototype together as quickly (and cheaply) as possible and get some friends together to try it out and see how it goes. You will likely change the game quite a bit (and streamline as you go). Most people can’t figure this all out in their heads, you need to get it to the table and see how it goes!
The easiest way to check if your game will be fun later on is to look at what your players will do later during the game and for how long. For example, if you have a lot of downtime in the game, players will spend a lot of time waiting for their turn. Ultimately, if you have an idea, it's good to get it on the table as quickly as possible and test it with friends. I`ld also recommend as it's your first game, don't spend too much time and effort on it. There are developers who invested years into their first game which ended in the trash can.
So should i monetize my 1st game? I have had it in prototype since 2019
I don’t know what you mean by monetize your game 🤷♀️
Hi Pam!
Did you see my responses to your questions in the chat? They seem to have disappeared 😆
@@PamWallsGameDesign I sure did!
Looks like chat is wiped when the live ends.
Wanna hear a funny story?
I was a little bit demoralised because I am still working on my first game (I since have started working on more, thank God, but no contracts yet) and have had little luck with it, so... This video made me question seriously if I should move on to my other designs.
Would you believe that 1 hour later, just now, a friend of mine asked me if we can try that game again?
I'm so excited!
Anyway, thank you for sharing your sensible game design tips 😁
@@michelebaioni5716 I’m glad to hear it! Best of luck playtesting it again. I like to have a few games on the go at a time so there’s less pressure on each of the games. Keep at it, you’ve got this! 🙌
You are so fucking funny fr
Interesting, but I can barely hear you with my laptop cranked.
Please turn up your microphone gain.
Sure thing Jerry
The biggest thing to remember is " am I building this for me? Or for others to enjoy" this lady doesn't know what you want.
What do you mean?
Many thanks! Very useful video
I’m glad it was helpful for you! Thanks for watching :)